A heavy Hearthstone card containing a Coin, which you can use in a Vending Machine for Blizzard Buildables

A Hearthstone Card fridge magnet with a pop out center for you to add your photo and be on a Hearthstone Card

A random pin (we got a Golden Malfurion) which can be swapped at BlizzCon and online, to build a complete set of pins

Several promotional deals including a free poster from Intel, a chance to win a tablet from Intel, a chance to win hardware from Steelseries, and a 20% off discount from Newegg

A map and schedule

Several informative cards

Blizzard Toys and Collectibles Manager Jason Bischoff has clarified the exclusivity of several Goodie Bag tems on Twitter:

Check out the pictures below:

Warlords of Draenor Australian Celebration

Wowhead guide writer Dayani, who was on Wowhead Weekly recently talking about healing in Warlords, attended the Australian Warlords of Draenor celebration this week! She graciously took some pictures for us and wrote up a summary of the event, including Lead Game Designer Ion Hazzikostas' Q&A and presentation:

Event Pictures

Event Writeup

The event was held at Event Cinemas, 520-525 George St Sydney, and started at 7:15, went until around 8:45 or so. There was an afterparty following the event for a handful of Australian WoW community people.

The event opened with a cinematic reminiscent of Vanilla WoW, with scenes showing each class and race and a few moments of what is unique about them. E.g. started with a Dwarf Hunter calling his bear pet, then a NE druid running through the forest and switching in and out of cat form, an undead Warlock summoning a demon, etc. After the cinematic a Blizzard ANZ guy named Chris came out on the stage and introduced the event, talked about the 10-year anniversary, and announced the Australian servers. The crowd went absolutely NUTS at that revelation - I don’t think anyone was expecting it at all.

Then he introduced Ion, and Ion gave us a short and interesting presentation about the design goals of Warlords and how WoW design has changed over the years. He started out reminiscing about vanilla WoW and how everything was brand new and not very well understood. A lot of flaws were overlooked due to a general sense of wonder of the huge world that they had created.

Back in Vanilla WoW they could afford to have exclusive end-game content, because the actual leveling content was so extensive and took so long that most players never reasonably hoped to achieve the end game at all. The most hardcore players would reach end game / max level and that is what the raids were aimed at. But that isn’t the way the game works anymore, and the Warlords design - and many of the changes they have made over the years - have been aimed at making the game more accessible for all players.

He talked about things that did work: Mostly expanding the breadth of the content by adding new modes of gameplay like Arena, PvE matchmaking, daily quests, holidays, achievements and collections.

He also admitted they'd made some mistakes along the way - mainly when content was provided for one group of players *at the expense of other players*. Encounter tuning was an example of this -- BC was really, really hard, and so very few players got to see it, and those players who did were pretty used to feeling exclusive about it. Then in Wrath the first raid was really easy, and suddenly a much larger playerbase got to experience raiding and kill every boss. Then when Ulduar was released, it was very hard, and those raid groups who had first seen success in Naxx hit a huge roadblock in Ulduar, which Ion admitted must not have felt very good for them. They swung back to easy again with ToC/ICC and also opened up more modes of raiding so the people who were left out of Ulduar could get back into it. Then Cataclysm was very tough at the start, and this was again a misstep.

The introduction of LFR, though, meant that they could go hard again with Mists raid content, because there *was* an easier version available for players who wanted to see raids but couldn't commit the time to mastering the more difficult modes. However, at the start of Mists this did leave out a group in the middle - people who wanted more of a challenge than LFR but couldn’t get their foot in the door for normal. This is what Flex was aimed at.

In Warlords there are going to be four difficulties all at once, hopefully this will help cover the entire skill/time spectrum of players.

He talked about applying lessons from this 10 year journey. One great quote was when he emphasized that “Accessibility is not the enemy of depth”, and talked a lot about the ability squish and how it is aimed at reducing the barrier to entry for new players, differentiating classes more, leaving room to grow our ability sets again in future expansions. He talked about how depth in this game is derived not just from our rotations, but from how we adapt ourselves to the demands of an encounter/PvP event, and that even at the top level there is a lot of room for skill and innovation to make a huge difference to players’ success - about how even the top guilds make mistakes and always have some ways to improve.

Another avenue of depth, he said, is the addition of powerful and *transformative* set bonuses from raid gear. This gives players reasons to change up their usual rotation, new things to react to, new things to track and think about while they are executing content. By tying this extra level of complexity to raiding gear that isn't available in LFR, he & the team hope to provide additional depth to the players who want it the most - those challenging themselves against the hardest content.

He addressed Garrisons as well but didn't say anything new about them. Building and customizing a part of the game world is the theme of the Garrisons.

After this, PJ - who runs the @Blizzard_ANZ twitter account - came out and briefly interviewed Ion. They chatted about how Ion transitioned from law to game design, what a work day is like for him, etc. The best bit of this was when Ion talked about how he evaluates whether a given raid encounter was successful - Ion said there are three criteria for it:

How well did the tuning of the encounter match its target audience? It doesn’t feel great for players to hit a content wall, but it also doesn’t feel great for players to kill a new boss without having to think about it - there’s no impact. They’ve failed as designers when they miss the tuning mark for the intended audience of the content.

How easy was the encounter to understand? They don't like designing encounters that *require* out-of-game guides and resources in order for players to understand what to do. The ideal encounter is challenging to execute but intuitive to strategize.

How immersive and cool did the encounter feel? This includes the innovation of mechanics, visual and audio elements that add to the atmosphere of the fight, how well the encounter fit in to the overall theme or storyline of the expansion and raid.

After this, Ion took some questions from the crowd. Many of the questions focused on the Australian servers topic, which Ion couldn't really answer. One question was about whether complex and class-/race-specific questlines would ever come back, and Ion admitted that the green fire quest was really cool, but a lot of work, and that they’d like to do things like this again but the development commitment is so high it is a bit of a deterrent.

I did get to ask a question about dungeons and keeping the rewards for running them relevant. He didn't get to address it very much in the QA session but we did talk afterwards and he told me a huge goal in the new WoD CMs is in incentivizing completion. He told a story about a co-worker who had spent 3 hours “trying to complete” CM Gate of the Setting Sun in MoP and never did, then said he still needed to valor cap -- and Ion was like, if you spent 3 hours in CM Gate how could you possibly need valor? The co-worker said they never actually finished the instance once - just kept resetting when there were mistakes that they suspected would cost them Gold Medal. He thinks this was an unfortunate side effect of making the ONLY rewards for completing the dungeon cosmetic, and hopes that the daily quest for the potential of LFR gear will help indicate to players that they should be finishing the CMs, not just “Gold or Bust” mentality.

Comments

Comment by Cielos

Wow, that swag bag is disappointing. The only cool thing is the toy, which is kind of sad.

So much for an amazing 10th anniversary. I see this as a trend, which will extend to the game, as well. :\"

Comment by perculia

on 2014-10-25T12:27:05-05:00

Aw really? I thought there was lots of cool stuff in it, but not everyone likes the same type of collectibles. People have very different opinions over my dolls in the background for the show, for example. I prefer it over bags from previous years though :)

Personally I an excited over the keychain and pins. Now that I can see the pins more clearly in the pics, I want Nova and Kerrigan ones too.

Comment by livlivliv

on 2014-10-25T12:28:31-05:00

OMG the bag is awesome! I love the keychain, toy and wrist band so much! Can't wait! So much better than last years bag too!

I don't know if I'd want to spend the coin, does anyone know waht a Blizzard buildable is?

Comment by oliviadgrace

on 2014-10-25T12:29:31-05:00

OMG the bag is awesome! I love the keychain, toy and wrist band so much! Can't wait! So much better than last years bag too!

I don't know if I'd want to spend the coin, does anyone know waht a Blizzard buildable is?

We were wondering that too! Given that it's a vending machine, maybe the little capsule toys? Not sure.

Comment by Cielos

on 2014-10-25T12:36:55-05:00

Yeah, I was just hoping for more exclusive items, ones which won't be available in stores, but I have a feeling the bag is a preview of what will be available in the Blizzard store in the upcoming months.

Comment by oliviadgrace

on 2014-10-25T12:40:22-05:00

Yeah, I was just hoping for more exclusive items, ones which won't be available in stores, but I have a feeling the bag is a preview of what will be available in the Blizzard store in the upcoming months.

That's fair, personally I prefer to get lots of cool freebies that can also be bought online - if they make lots of things for the bag, I guess they have to sell them too to recoup costs. If it's a choice between just a couple of exclusive items and lots of items that can be got elsewhere I always prefer the latter, but as Perc said, everyone's different!

Comment by Megabucks

on 2014-10-25T12:55:43-05:00

-grabbies at mur-ghoul-

Comment by Dashan

on 2014-10-25T13:01:52-05:00

I think it's a good thing if the bag contents are not all exclusive, many people can't make it to blizzcon, so why not make those items available to us "casuals" too. it's like raid finder! :)

Comment by moosecat11

on 2014-10-25T13:50:09-05:00

I love what's going to be in this bag! So excited I get to go this year. Looks like some new pop figures are coming too in November. On Amazon it looks like they will release the 11th, so I hope they will release early in the Blizzcon store!

Comment by jamescamille

Was there any information on the release date for the Australian Servers? So happy that my ping will no longer be 135ms.! Love the video!

Comment by Cr0wl0ck

on 2014-10-25T13:57:04-05:00

undead murloc should be added to game as a pet, currently there are only humanoid murloc sp an undead would be a great change :D

Comment by Vazran

on 2014-10-25T14:13:46-05:00

I disagree with the LFR set bonus deal. If you think about it, LFR has 6 capable slots. Which means you could 4pc tier bonus and actually get 2pc LFR bonus as well. Increases the chances that it could out rank Normal gear in those 2 slots. Maybe not Heroic/Mythic though.

Comment by Klaital1

on 2014-10-25T15:49:53-05:00

Damn that mur'ghoul looks kind of creepy.

Comment by Yvonnek

on 2014-10-25T17:16:30-05:00

I agree with CrOwlOck Murghoul battle pet would rock!. and BTW good job with the weekly show ladies. :)

Comment by Starlin

on 2014-10-25T19:01:48-05:00

I really hope they have enough pins in stock. I can see buying a large number of those trying to get a set. Any idea how much per pack?

Comment by oliviadgrace

on 2014-10-25T20:53:21-05:00

I really hope they have enough pins in stock. I can see buying a large number of those trying to get a set. Any idea how much per pack?

No idea, no, but we'll be sure to post that information as soon as we get it!

Comment by Troo

on 2014-10-26T03:07:58-05:00

I think it's a good thing if the bag contents are not all exclusive, many people can't make it to blizzcon, so why not make those items available to us "casuals" too. it's like raid finder! :)

I am kind of hoping that this was written with some sarcasm. The "casuals" in this instance haven't paid almost $200 (or more depending on how they got their ticket) for a ticket to get in, airfare, hotel, food, etc. I know, I know.. a lot of them would have if they could have gotten lucky with the queue. There needs to be something special for the people that actually attend. I know it doesn't seem fair to those that can't attend, but you don't see everyone getting to buy the limited edition Back to the Future shoes at an affordable price just because people complained that they couldn't afford to win an auction for one.

After last year's goody bag, this one wins in my book just based on how much more stuff is in it. Last year's was horrible.

Comment by CerebralChain

on 2014-10-26T04:36:02-05:00

Ooh, an Archon.. And it glows in the dark, as well? :o

Power overwhelming!

Comment by Oliveer7

on 2014-10-26T07:53:22-05:00

Am i the only person who thinks that the coin itself is kind of the best thing ever?

Comment by permeus

on 2014-10-26T08:50:32-05:00

i have to ask why isnt this show (wow weekly)showing up on the Zam Channel for youtube?